Launching a National Conversation

Disaster Resilience: A National Imperative

Communities and the nation continue to face difficult choices about the best ways to ensure basic security and quality of life against the rising human, fiscal, and environmental tolls from natural and human-induced disasters. One way to reduce the impacts of disasters on the nation and its communities is to invest in enhancing resilience, a topic confronted by the 2012 National Research Council report, Disaster Resilience: A National Imperative.

To start and support a national conversation on resilience, the National Academies hosted two public events about resilience, one on November 30, 2012, and another on September 5, 2013. In response to the positive feedback from those events and to the messages in the report, the institution has been asked by several partners to continue its work in the area of risk, resilience, and extreme events. This website will provide a pathway through which to share information about these new activities.